“I think it could hurt to have somebody so relatively effortlessly improve your work.”
I’m sure it really can be. I have heard that Nina Simone was very annoyed that Eric Burdon & the Animals had such a big hit with her song “I’m just a soul whose intentions are good”. Which is an amazingly good song and they did an amazing version of it.
But I always thing Burdon & Co. had the edge, because to me that song makes more sense from a man. But, she did write it. So, ART!
Cash’s version of Hurt is also amazing. And so is Chrissie Hynde’s version of Creep.
I find one way to test a song, to see if it is a good song even if it is not to my taste, is to transpose it into another genre.
If, in the case of this song, Cash took a grunge rock genre song and turned into a classic country song and it’s fantastic. To me, even though I’m not a fan of grunge rock, it’s obviously a fantastic song on its own merits.
The song Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood was written by three men. But specifically, one man, Horace Ott, started the song, after a fight with his girlfriend (later wife), so you have a good ear, about it making more sense coming from a man.
Gladys Knight was really mad a Motown because they released the Marvin Gaye version shortly after her version went #2, then the Gaye version went no. 1 for eight weeks and upstaged it. The Gaye version and one by Smokey Robinson were recorded before Knight and the Pips did it. Motown barely supported Gladys Knight's version, but it was the label's best selling single at that time. Strangely, Berry Gordon never liked any of the three versions, and had to be forced to release both of them. And of course, within two years, CCR did a long rock version of it.
Also, to what you were saying Jonty, one day I heard Gladys Knight's Midnight Train to Georgia on the radio, and I thought, "Wait a second, this is a country song." I looked it up, and the writer was indeed a country music guy.
In the 70s, especially, country musicians covered soul songs and vice versa. Think Barbara Mandrell covering Luther Ingram's (If Loving You Is Wrong) I Don't Want to Be Right, Otis Redding's I've Been Loving You Too Long, and Joe Tex's Show Me.